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Express Planning and Assessment Award

The NN/LM Southeastern/Atlantic (SE/A), as part of its outreach program, is accepting applications from SE/A network members to plan or assess the feasibility for future outreach projects. Planning and assessment are the foundations for the success of any outreach project.

Award Goals

The goals of the Express Planning and Assessment Award are to:

Determine the feasibility of a future outreach project with specific populations or with unaffiliated health professionals..

Assess community or target population’s need for or interest in a project.

Develop statewide emergency preparedness and response plans.

Develop a special interest library consortium or network.

Potential Projects

Potential projects include, but are not limited to:

Hosting a series of planning meetings with potential outreach partners.

Conducting a community assessment to determine the need for outreach.

Conducting a needs assessment of the target group(s) to use in the development of a larger outreach project.

Conducting statewide library disaster/emergency preparedness planning meetings to ensure continuity of information services in the state should a disaster occur.

Host planning meetings for the development of a library special interest consortium or network such as consumer health network, e-licensing consortium, etc.

Partner with state libraries or associations to assess health information needs of states unaffiliated health professionals.

Eligibility Requirements

Full or affiliate SE/A members in Alabama, District of Columbia, Georgia, Florida, Maryland, Mississippi, North Carolina, Puerto Rico, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Partnerships between SE/A members and community, faith, and minority organizations are strongly encouraged.

A Memorandum of Understanding with the University of Maryland, Baltimore is required for this award.

For technology or computer hardware purchases $3,000 or more – submit three (3) vendor quotes (valid preferably for 60 days, minimum of 30 days). Quotes may include General Service Administration (GSA) price lists. Reference: http://www.gsa.gov.

For personal appeal Items such as cameras, MP3 Players, Smartphones, and laptop computers the proposal must address the following:

Purpose: There is a legitimate purpose for the items, and use of the items by the awardee will be managed in accordance with institutional policy.

Appropriate Use: Items will not be used in a way that would discredit the NN/LM, the National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health or the applicable Institution.

Cost Effective: Must demonstrate requested items are cost effective and appropriate. For example, will generic brands satisfy the minimum requirements? If not, the proposal/request must describe 1) why it is necessary to purchase branded products, 2) benefits in brand name products. How will items further the mission of the NN/LM and achieve the objectives of the contract?

Vendor quotes are necessary to determine price reasonable for purchase of $3,000 or more. The absence of competitive quotes must be documented and justified.

The Use of Appropriated Funds for Educational (Promotional) Items

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has developed a new policy that promotes the Administration’s commitment to act in a fiscally responsible manner by minimizing our administrative costs to perform our mission-critical functions in the most efficient, cost-effective way. It is the Department’s policy that appropriated funds not be used to pay for promotional items. Promotional items include, but are not limited to: clothing and commemorative items such as pens, mugs/cups, folders/folios, lanyards,and conference bags that are sometimes provided to visitors, employees, grantees, or conference attendees. Typically, items or tokens to be given to individuals are considered personal gifts for which appropriated funds may not be expended.

Period of Performance

Projects MUST be completed by April 30, 2016.

Selection Criteria

Criteria for selection include: feasibility of plan to meet project objectives or to reach target audience, selection of appropriate community partners or target communities, and qualifications of project personnel and support provided by host institution and partners.

Reporting Requirements

Quarterly reports of project activities, including progress made toward goals and problems encountered, and completion of outreach reporting activity forms are required. A final report covering the entire period of performance is due within 30 days of the close of the project.

Reports will be entered and submitted to the Outreach Application and Online Contract Reports System at: https://outreach.nlm.nih.gov Users of the System must first create an account before reports can be submitted. Contact your RML for additional information on the Online Contract Reports System.

If training is conducted as part of the project, the awardee will complete a record of the event in the online outreach activity and reporting system within 2 weeks of the activity. The NN/LM SE/A office will provide an instruction manual for inputting this information into the system.

Development of Training Materials

Successful applicants are expected to use or adapt existing training materials before developing new materials. Consult the Medical Library Association (MLA) Educational Clearinghouse, http://cech.mlanet.org prior to developing materials. Training materials developed as part of the award should be submitted to the MLA Educational Clearinghouse.

Publication and Publicity

The awardee shall acknowledge the support of the National Library of Medicine whenever publicizing the work under this award in any media by including an acknowledgment substantially as follows:

This project has been funded in whole or in part with Federal funds from the National Library of Medicine, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services, under Contract No. HHS-N-276-2011-00004-C with the University of Maryland Baltimore.

NIH Policy on Enhancing Public Access to Archived Publications Resulting from NIH-Funded Research

As of April 7, 2008, final peer-reviewed manuscripts arising from NIH funds must be submitted to PubMed Central upon acceptance for publication. The NIH Public Access Policy at http://publicaccess.nih.gov/policy.htm ensures that the public has access to the published results of NIH funded research. It requires scientists to submit final peer-reviewed journal manuscripts that arise from NIH funds to the digital archive PubMed Central (http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/) upon acceptance for publication. To help advance science and improve human health, the Policy requires that these papers (http://publicaccess.nih.gov/FAQ.htm#b1) are accessible to the public on PubMed Central no later than 12 months after publication. The NIH Public Access site should be consulted for additional information: http://publicaccess.nih.gov/policy.htm.

Authors that publish NIH-supported, peer-reviewed articles in full PMC-participating journals (such as the Journal of the Medical Library Association) have fulfilled their obligations to NIH Public Access and have nothing else to do.

If an NIH-supported peer-review article is published in a non-PMC journal, the final manuscript must be submitted to PMC via the NIH Manuscript Submission System (NIHMS). If the author was supported by an NIH contract, and the contract details are not available for selection in the NIHMS, the author should contact the NIHMS Help Desk to have this information added to the system. This lets the NIHMS Help Desk correlate requests with specific manuscript numbers and specific users, and helps us resolve the issue faster.

Cost Proposal Information

All awards issued under the Prime NLM Contract are subject to the Government’s availability of funds in compliance of Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 52.232-18, Availability of Funds.

The Government’s obligation under this contract is contingent upon the availability of appropriated funds from which payment for contract purposes can be made. No legal liability on the part of the Government for any payment may arise until funds are made available to the Contracting Officer for this contract and until the Contractor receives notice of such availability, to be confirmed in writing by the Contracting Officer.